Right now the Militia-line is in a limbo, where it’s sort of an all-around unit, but not particularly good against either archers or cavalry. So my proposal is to split it into two unit lines. One that costs gold (which will start from the MAA in Feudal Age, all the way up to Champion), and one that costs only food (which starts with Militia in Dark Age, and then can upgrade into better units in Feudal, Castle and Imperial Age).
The gold costing line will be the same as they are today, but slightly buffed. They will also cost more gold to compensate. Perhaps something like 45 food, 40 gold a base price.
The Militia-line (costing only food) will gain some speed (1.05 as base speed compared to 0.9, so they are the same as Huskarls). But they will lose their attack bonuses against Eagle Warriors and Standard Buildings.
I would probably remove the Gambesons tech (so these stats are without that tech in mind).
Stats (compared to current):
M@A: +5 HP (50 HP total) and +1 attack (7 total)
Long Swordsman: +1 attack (10 total) and +1 pierce armor (2 total)
Two-Handed Swordsman: +10 HP (70 total), +2 pierce armor (3 total)
Champion: +10 HP (80 total), +3 pierce armor (4 total, 8 after all upgrades)
So now the Champion will be more of a power unit in Imperial Age, and the upgrade from 2HS to Champ will have a similar effect of the Cavalier to Paladin upgrade (although still not as strong). They will now have 8 pierce armor fully upgraded, and will take 40 Arbelaster arrows to kill (similar to a Cavalier).
And then the Militia-line would cost 60f and no gold. Militia is the same as it is today. Then it can gain about 10 HP and 1 attack for every upgrade. Can be used as a raiding unit instead of the Light Cavalry line. Slower, but does not take bonus damage from Spears or Skirmishers. They also lose in a 1v1 against Hussars.
The two handed Infantry and the ones with the shield where originally supposed to be 2 different unit lines.
Both starting in Castle Age.
You can still see that the MAA looks like a Knight and the Long Swordsman looks like a Cavalier.
If we want to split it, I would rather like to have a “Shieldman” instead.
The funny thing is, that in the early middle ages shield formations were very comon, almost dominating the warfare.
So the Shieldman would literally be basically just that, a guy who carries a Shield. Very cheap (no gold cost), but very low damage (even lower than the spearman line). But good HP and solid Armor.
One design I once made made the unit super cheap and even take only 1/2 pop space like karambits - cause otherwise ranged units wouldn’t target the shieldmen naturally and therefore they would lose their intended utillity. Which is basically just soaking arrows and probably also be some kind of buffer unit for vulnerable ranged units you field yourself.
And this specialisation of the Shieldman to be the arrow soaker would then allow to establish the militia line as a very strong melee fighter - remove supplies and gambesons and rather give them some more melee oumpf they can work with instead. It’s also possible to make the militia line excel with timings if they get cheap upgrades.
The shieldman would imo add a lot to feudal warfare already where as we all know atm the archer line is just generally seen as the strongest option. Mainly ofc as in feudal there are no mangonels the only real counter option are skirms which are very fragile and don’t suit many civs well. Skirms alos come from the same building and require the same upgrades which brings the player who has to change into them after opening with something different in a big disadvantage, as the one who opened with ranged units first already has the structures there to match the skirm numbers of the defender.
So I see the chance of bringing a bit more unit variety in feudal warfare as the shieldman could be more suitable option against archer openins for the melee focussed civs than the current Skirmisher counter play.
It can also be interesting to see how different civ bonusses interact with the shieldman. I can see that Burmese Shieldman eg would be very interesting as the extra attack would reduce the major weakness of the unit, the super low damage output. So for Burmese the unit would be very useful also because they struggle against archer units in general. But for civs like Goths they would possibly see very little use after the beginning as the Huskarls would be way better at the job. But ofc in the early game Goths cheap Shieldmen would be very dangerous, possibly requiring to nerf the current goths laming bonusses.
Interesting, I did not know this. Which version was this in? I have several pre-release versions, but none are like that. The oldest one I have has a food-only swordsman in Feudal Age, and another swordsman line that starts in Castle Age, and upgrades to two-handed swordsman then champion.
As far as I remember in the alpha the concept was that the militia line could switch modes similar to the current ratha design and wear a shield that protects from arrows in one of them.
But I don’t think this would be a good idea to implement now as i’m pretty sure it would be abused by micro nerds like crazy.
Better to have separate units that have specific and distinct strengths and weaknesses.
This actually sounds similar to an early alpha version’s barracks units:
Dark Age: Spearman, costs food only.
Feudal Age: Swordman [sic], costs food only.
Castle Age: Heavy Swordsman, Pikeman – both cost food and gold. Heavy Swordsman upgrades to Two-Handed Swordsman.
Imperial Age: Two-Handed Swordman upgrades to Champion.
Pikemen were slightly more expensive and had higher damage than the Heavy Swordsman line, but no pierce armour. In Imperial Age, they were completely superseded by the Champion.
I’m not aware of that for militia, but it was definitely considered for samurai and for a Persian “multipurpose cavalry” unit.
It should be like this. cavalry counter archers, archers counter infantry and infantry counters cavalry. this way we have rock paper scissors. pikes are the obvious choice against knights because it’s much cost efficient. champion line should counter knights but less efficient than pikes and be a more rounded unit. I think they just need to reduce food cost a little, improve hp to work more as a meat shield in frontline, reduce its attack to compensate and add bonus damage vs cavalry. and I think the huge number of techs and upgrades of infantry makes them harder to transition into or use while archers and cavalry use 1 or 2 upgrades.
no actually its because in real life ranks of pikemen were used to keep cavalry at bay think celtic ######### its because the length of the pole that cavalry cant come close knights in real life annihilated swordmen the horses merely trampled swordmen amidst their charge so in game pikes yes counter cavalry men at arms no they have to be given another role thats their problem they have no role they dont do anything right
edit i didnt use bad words it was merely the name of the scottish pikes formation look it up it begins with sch and ends with on